Forthcoming, University of Illinois Press, 2027.

The first sustained study of Cage and Hiller’s 1969 multimedia work, drawing on archival research and original analysis to read HPSCHD as a foundational moment in the history of human-machine collaboration. Across seven harpsichordists, fifty-two computer-generated tapes, and thousands of slides and films playing simultaneously, HPSCHD proposed a model of performance in which no single signal could claim priority — programming as score, code as composition, listening as a practice of inhabiting systems too large to hold whole. This book recovers that proposition and asks what it still has to tell us about art, computation, and the limits of control.

Summary:

In the late 1960s, John Cage and Lejaren A. Hiller Jr. embarked on programming and organizing a participatory, computer-assisted music event larger than any before (and most after). The result, HPSCHD, constituted a crucial moment in the history of software in artistic practice. Engaging both Cage’s interest in indeterminacy as well as Hiller’s creative application of information theory in composition, the two collaborators programmed an event juxtaposing the mechanical simplicity of the harpsichord with the complex capabilities of a supercomputer to investigate procedural and ontological notions of chance operations. This ambitious multi-media performance was composed of seven solo pieces for harpsichord derived from processed works by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Gottschalk, Busoni, Schoenberg, Cage, and Hiller, 52 microtonal, computer-generated magnetic tapes, and over 8,000 slides and 40 films.

In March 2009, Cory Arcangel’s Super Mario Clouds (2002) appeared on the cover of Artforum, signalling that videogames had finally ‘made it’ into art discourse proper. All Arcangel had to do was jettison almost every element (ground, trees, powerups, monsters and Mario himself) that had earned the original Super Mario Brothers cartridge a ‘Nintendo Seal of Approval’ to make it into a video edition. While there were earlier and arguably more provocative Mario hacks, such as Myfanwy Ashmore’s Super Mario Trilogy (2000–04) – an existential-nightmare modification of the game in which Mario lives and dies without the performance-enhancing drugs that allow him to reach the level-ending flag – Arcangel’s Clouds are benign and boring, more Abstract Expressionist colour-field than side-scroller.⁠

This comparison – Arcangel’s versus Ashmore’s Mario – offers a provocative lens through which to play recent high-profile videogame artworks. One such work, Gabriel Massan’s Third World: The Bottom Dimension (2023), a free-to-play downloadable videogame made for the Serpentine’s 2023 exhibition of the same name, marked a significant moment in the history of videogame art. Not so much because of its content, but more in its high-profile participation in the ‘play-to-earn’ gaming genre as conspicuous cultural capitalism. The game features a playable character named Funfun (Yoruba for ‘white’) – a hybrid robot-organic construct navigating a dynamically shifting alien landscape. The Unreal Engine-generated habitats of fungi and rock grow, morph and decay much like so many pop-cultural dystopian landscapes, nodding to such sublime horrors as the DNA-altering ‘shimmer’ in Alex Garland’s film Annihilation (2018), the fungal mutations in The Last of Us television (2023–) and videogame (2013) series, as well as the eldritch trappings of games like Elden Ring (2022) and Death Stranding (2019).⁠ ⁠

This edited volume is now available in open-Access or in print on the Amherst College Press website.

Many ambitious and experimental game forms don’t fit into the digital download or retail distribution channels that support so-called “traditional” video games. Instead, these games are supported by a new global movement in video game curation. This special edition of the Video Game Art Reader features an international collaboration of video game professionals working together to create a resource for game exhibition organization, design, and curation.

Professionals, artists, and others who organize and curate video game exhibitions and events act within a rhizomatic network of methods, missions, and goals. They establish organizations like galleries, collectives, and non-profits. Methods of sharing video games as critical cultural phenomena continue to evolve and expand. Conceived during the first meeting of GAIA (Game Arts International Assembly), the Game Arts Curators Kit documents and shares the collective experience of an international network of video game curators and organizers. Including practical tips on everything from accessibility to preservation, the book serves as a guide to support a new global movement in video game curation.

Exhibition description:

Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982 explores how the rise of computer technology, together with its emergence in popular consciousness, impacted the making of art in the age of the mainframe. International and interdisciplinary in scope, Coded examines the origins of what we now call digital art, featuring artists, writers, musicians, choreographers, and filmmakers working directly with computers as well as those using algorithms and other systems to produce their work. Whether computer-generated or not, the many artworks considered here reflect the simultaneous wonder and alienation that was characteristic of the 1960s and ’70s, along with the utopian and dystopian possibilities of these new machines. Today, with digital technology having been fully integrated into our lives, Coded’s examination of the years leading up to the advent of the personal computer is relevant, even imperative, to fully appreciating art and culture in the age of the computer—both then and now.

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I am Editor-in-Chief of the Video Game Art (VGA) Reader, a peer-reviewed journal for video game audiences and video game practitioners interested in the history, theory, and criticism of video games, explored through the lens of art history and visual culture. Its primary aim is to facilitate conversation and exploration of video game art, documenting and disseminating discourse about the far-reaching influence of video games on history, society, and culture.

Through a partnership with Amherst College Press all of our past issues are available, open-access.

We are always looking for scholarly explorations of games as art, from academics, scholars, and researchers to developers and gamers. Reach out to tfunk@vgagallery.org with pitches and questions.